In a short period of time 2017 will be nothing more
than a mere memory. All the living. All the chaos. All the blessings. All the
angst. Few things will make it through the memory-portal as the year slams shut.
Over the last few days, I’ve been richly embedded in 2017
memories. Some were laugh-out-loud moments. Others tugged at my heart. Then
there were those times that highlighted my insecurity or picked at a wound that
should have healed.
What do we do with all these things? Do we drag them into
a new year, a new beginning? I’ve been pondering these things for days. Why?
Well, I think it was to get me to this day and read the scripture highlighted
in my journal.
“Finally, whatever is true, whatever is pure, whatever
is right, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy –
think about such things.” Philippians 4:8
If
anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.
You know something, all those memories were priceless,
even the hard ones. I think I grew closer to God when life sat me on the edge
of a cliff. God certainly taught me a multitude of life lessons while I winced
and recited “do not be afraid” a million times. I’m certain He laughed when I
wondered “how long”. God knew the exact, perfect moment to ease the tension. I
knew it, too.
Come to think about it, I’m going to take all my
memories with me into 2018. I wouldn’t give up all the lessons for all the
blessings. Every intervention, every wait kept me on the narrow path, following
Jesus.
I know life in 2018 will present me with different kinds
of confusion, calamity, and chaos, but I’ve had some great training. You know,
I’m getting excited about all the opportunities and challenges the new year
holds.
Are you getting your praiseworthy thoughts ready for
the upcoming year?
Colossians 3:23-24 "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving."
God asks us to serve one another (Galatians 5:13). When we serve others, we are the hands and feet of Jesus. It's humbling to think that when we help others we are doing what Christ does for us every day. Whether we realize it or not Jesus is growing and stretching us for His kingdom by the service opportunities He presents us and the life situations He maneuvers us through. Every lesson we learn are tools to help others. We serve God with the fullness of everything He has given us, the joy, and the hardships.
I just finished reading Discovering Josue. If you ever wondered what a servant's heart looks like please read this book. Having a Jesus-style servant's heart is hard. There's a cost. That's the reason most of us pull back or rethink whether we want to jump in and help others. We have to set aside time. The situation might be messy or hurtful. Finances may come into play, also emotions. This is the sticky part . . . we might have to deal with listening and refrain from disagreeing. We might have to build a relationship to get people to listen to us. More time.
God was preparing Gloria Giovanna way before Josue entered her life. On a whim to learn something new, Gloria decides to learn Spanish. She was a hairstylist and often had customers who were Spanish-speaking. It just seemed a natural progression to learn their language. Then she got into Latino dancing and the exotic flavors of Mexican food. What seemed like a huge challenge ended up fun and exciting, a reprieve from being a single mom struggling to rear three children.
God also brought a client to Gloria that needed help with a patient, an eighteen-year-old Mexican boy who was dying of bone cancer. The client was an oncologist. His heart was breaking for this young man who could not speak English and didn't seem to have any family in the States.
It's wonderful when someone tells their story and doesn't leave out the angst or questions. Gloria struggles with the oncologist's request. How in the world could she add one more thing to her overfull life? She was struggling to buy food and pay the bills. Her time was spent working in her beauty shop and taking care of three kids. She had no time or money to run around helping anyone. But God had a different plan.
Reading Discovering Josue is discovering ourselves. Do we have a servant's heart? Are we willing to pay the cost?
For Gloria the cost was getting to love someone she would have never met without God's intervention. Once Josue entered her life, there was no backing out. Next thing she knew, she was rounding up everyone she knew to enter into the glorious opportunity of discovering Josue.
"I went to visit him every spare moment and called to check on him two or three times a day."
The urgency to tell Josue's story never left her.
"I needed to get the story out of my system. I told her that I had no formal writing experience and no degree . . . but I need to talk about this. I can't just let it go. So now seven and a half years later, this story is still clinging to me every day of my life, and so here I am."
With God's help, Gloria finally published Josue's story. But it's more than his story, it's God's story pressed into Gloria's, too. The book is infectious. You will love all the characters Gloria marshals to help her with Josue. Once infused with God's desire for her to serve Josue, Gloria worked incessantly.
I hope you will read Discovering Josue. God will show you what it means to serve others.
God bless you,
Angela
Amazon link to Discovering Josue by Gloria Giovanna
http://amzn.to/2viJM9O
If you haven't picked up the September 12, 2017 issue of the magazine, First, for women, you might want to. There's an article on page 48, "Unexpected Grace: A lovely language", which compliments the work God did in Gloria Giovanna's life.
God is alive and well and working hard in the lives of His children.
This is Sydney. She is five. Yesterday I was sitting
in the car with her while her mother was shopping. We were having a very lively
five-year-old discussion when out of the blue, she said, “Nana, did you know
you can swallow your fear?”
Me: “Swallow your fear? How?”
I watched as she inhaled, expanded her chest very
wide, and exhaled very dramatically.
Then Sydney said, “That’s how you do it. You take in a
big huge breath, swallow, and blow out the fire.”
Me: “Fire?”
She gave me that look. It’s the look that glares, “You
are the adult and should know all these things”.
When I didn’t respond, she shrugged her shoulders and
explained, “The fire is fear.”
Me: “Who told you all this?”
Scrunching up her lips in total exasperation, she
announced, “Mommy tells me to breathe when I get upset. When I do, I swallow my
tears. Then I feel better. So when I get scared at night, I breathe in the fear,
swallow it, and then I blow the fire out. That’s the scary part of fear. Then
it’s all gone.”
Sydney immediately diverted her attention away from me
and on to something else. I sat back and pondered her words. Yep, leave it to a
kid to put you in your place.
Swallow your tears. Swallow your fears.
The Bible tells us, “For God gave us not the spirit of
fearfulness, but of power and love and discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7)
I think my granddaughter gave Nana a little lesson
here.
Sydney listened to her mom. Her mom lovingly
demonstrated to Sydney how to control (discipline) her emotions. She used that
strategy to control her fear.
Maybe Sydney’s strategy has some credence. Breathe in
deep, swallow the fear, and blow it out. When we blow fear out we get rid of it.
It no longer consumes us.
I turned around and got Sydney’s attention. “Do you
think God grabs that fear when you blow it out?”
Shrugging her shoulders again she declared, “Who else
would get it?”
Sometimes it pays to hang around children. You never
know what good advice you’ll get.
God bless you
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Day 8
Galatians 5:22 “But the fruit of the spirit is love. . . “
Zephaniah 3:17 “Sing to the Lord your love – bless God with
your actions, serve Him in love.”
Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope over the last 8 days you’ve
been motivated to live in the power and love of Christ. I pray you have looked
in the mirror and realized how beautiful you are. As for me, I always say, “God
loves this beautiful mess!” Because some days I’m not so sure about much, but
I’m always sure about Jesus, His words, and His demonstration of love. Sing to the Lord your love!
Have a beautiful day! Be the princess you were meant to be.
God bless you!
Angela
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Psalm 107:1 "Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is so good!"
Embrace the day and give God the glory! Thank Him for life. Thank Him for a new morning and a new beginning.
Months before I began writing Cries of Innocence, I
was faced with many facets of evil and deception. For a relatively calm and
gentle person, I can tell you that this was disconcerting to me.
For many years, God has led me into a ministry of
mentoring and teaching His Word. During this time, I’ve dealt with issues of
addiction, abuse, neglect, brokenness, and unforgivenes, scars that ran deep in
God’s children. Scripture tells us that God uses His spiritual warriors in many
ways, and He’s certainly had me on testing ground, preparing me for even more
challenging circumstances.
God used our thirty years of moving all over the
country to teach me. Every location brought new areas of ministry, mostly
working with children. Children have been the gem of my life. Whether it was
ministering to my own children or other people’s children or in a classroom or church
setting or as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for abused, neglected, and
abandoned children, children have been foremost in my life.
While working with children, God offered me the
opportunity to work with their parents, especially their mothers. I’ve been
police escorted into more homes than I care to remember. At this point in my
life, I began to think that evil reigned. So many had no hope. So many lived
lives standing on a time bomb, knowing it could explode any minute. I’ve been
in hospital rooms and listened to horror tales of physical abuse. I’ve held
hands of teens who had tried to commit suicide. I’ve wandered halls of court
rooms and wondered where justice had fled.
Did I ever think I’d write a book about all that
ugliness? No. And that’s because I could not see a happy ending to any of it.
Then in 2014 on a trip across the United States, my husband and I witnessed a
girl being attacked, openly and without recourse. At the time, I had just seen
Christine Caine at a faith-based women’s conference, and she had talked about
human trafficking, a ministry she is strongly engaged in. When I saw that man
beat that girl, uncaring if anyone witnessed it, I knew in my heart this
incident went beyond a man-woman disagreement. His dialect was European, and
hers were screams of fright.
I’ve been told many times there is no evil. Oh how
foolish! Evil is rampant, and we allow it to continue. We tie acceptable names
to it and wear it like it was a disfigurement that is tolerated.
My life up to this point birthed Cries of Innocence.
I began having dreams, and I don’t dream much, about
the protagonist in the book, Bren Parrot. I could see her. I began to know her
heart. I also began to know her fear and hopelessness. When I began writing her
story, it was to purge it from my subconscious. Then more and more of her story
began to surface, and I would pen that. Before I knew it I was staring at 203
pages. And I thought it was over, but within weeks of publishing Cries of
Innocence, the characters began throbbing in my head again.
For the past few months, God has been leading me to
tell the rest of Bren’s story. And over this time, I realized there would be
two more books that will come out of Bren’s life.
Cries of Grace will be about Bren and Joseph. It
will be a Christian Fictional Romance. I am almost finished, but the last part,
Part III, is going to be fun to write, but it will push me to make it something
you will never want to forget. (I can’t believe I just said that. The pressure
is on.)
Cries of Mercy will be . . . well, . . . God is
still working on that one, only sharing images of what new and complex life
issues Bren and Joseph will encounter. Evil does not rest. It stalks. It waits.
And then . . .
When the next book in the Cries series comes out, I
hope you will be eager to read it. I’m praying God’s fingerprints will be all
over it. For He is why I write. My Savior is why I put myself on the line,
writing about His children who realize, “Not for a moment will You forsake me.”
Please listen to Meredith Andrews song, “Not For A
Moment” to hear Bren’s heart announcing, “After all I’ve been through, You
never forsake me.”
Link to You tube video: Meredith Andrews “Not for the
Moment”
